


if you wanna fill your bottle up with lightning

by twistedingenue



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Classic Cars, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fusion: Comic and MCU, Infidelity, Road Trips, Sexual Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 15:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of poor life choices involving redheads and red cars, Clint's responsible decision making skills take another header after learning that Dr Foster and Darcy have missed their last few check-ins and winds up driving out to New Mexico with Kate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many things I need to say. First, a big thank you to the moderators of [marvel_bang](http://marvel-bang.livejournal.com), for organizing this whole shebang and giving me an outlet for this work. 
> 
> Second, check out the [ art](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1008223) and [vid](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH2UjH_EZW8) from [ Puffabilly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/puffabilly)! 
> 
> Third, thank you to Daroos and Britt and Puffabilly for betaing, for cheerleading, for helping me through the emotional journey of this fic. I was writing this during a really rough time and the constant support, personal stories and working through the layers 500 words at a time was a saving grace. I honestly could not have written this without you. I'm lucky to have all of you in my life.
> 
> Finally, notes actually specific to this work: This is a comics/MCU fusion, written up through Hawkeye 7 and plays fast and loose with Young Avengers, and written before Agents of SHIELD started airing.

It all starts on a Thursday, but that’s only because SHIELD as an entity has a long standing tradition of subtle irony. Thursday morning briefings have unofficial names and most involve puns on Thor’s Day.  They are also when the intelligence from Asgard and anyone associated with them is passed around to the relevant parties. It’s normally an entertaining day, because any news from Asgard is always scoped larger than life, even if it is just “Thor is delayed once again.” A few of the linguistics specialists have a pool on how many Old Norse loanwords will be used in the direct quotes section, and what the most archaic will be. Clint’s still trying to get a grasp on modern English, so he just observes this pool instead of being knee-deep into the betting like he is for the rest. Like, which agent is most likely to finish their mission 75% or more naked, and when will Woo and Hartmann finally get together (Clint’s got December 8th, because Hartmann is due back from her field op in Bulgaria the week before).

Clint isn’t allowed to participate in the “Recipient of the Captain America Guilt Trip” pool, because after the last time he pulled a prank just to get a little extra cash for the weekend, Natasha won for betting on Clint getting it twice in one week. When you work closely with the same people for years, your entire work environment just becomes one giant drinking game.

Still, he’s thinking about Agent Petrov and how he’s trying to finance his kid’s private school tuition and that it would probably be a little bit easier if he can get Cap to at least act like Clint has done something foolish next Tuesday, when the final bullet point for Thor’s Day is addressed. The rest of the meeting has been Asgardian politics and that’s a subject that he really cannot keep in his head unless maybe his life depended on it.  And even if his life depended on it, he’d probably just guess at the subject. He hasn’t really been paying attention.

“I’m sorry, what were you saying?” Clint interrupts Sitwell as he’s taking down the agenda and the rest of the agents are pushing away from the table. There was something important, something concerning the science division that he said, and the Asgard science division is technically where Darcy works.

If you took a flowchart to Clint’s mental functions right now, the decision tree shorts out sometime after Sitwell telling him that Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis have missed their last two check-ins.

When he finally comes to his senses and there's no heat in his mind that threatens to take him over, Clint's in an office. The small office he's sure is supposed to be his, but he never uses it so there's storage boxes stacked in half the corners and his fingers have cleared away just a little bit of the film of dust on the desk. If you are consistently in your office, people know where you can be found, and that's just not Clint's MO. A fundamental part of him is all about avoiding extra work.

Which is why it's surprising that he has a stack of files on his desk that, according to the jackets, he checked out. Since when does he check out files? Clint is given files sometimes and more often files are forced on him. And then he remembers just whose files and surveillance, communication logs and such he's checked out.

Darcy and Jane are missing and no one seems to care. They are just a footnote in a short briefing, something pended to be followed up on later; if it becomes urgent.

They haven't been seeing each other long. And that's more because they haven't actually seen each other much. He has his own missions; she has science field trips all across the country and sometimes other countries too. He saves the world and she helps Jane put the universe to rights, but neither job gives them much time to see or talk to each other.  And when they do get together, they aren’t always going out, per say.

As much as he likes that part of whatever they've got going, he likes it when their schedules align enough to talk almost more, because compared to his dating history, she's downright refreshing. She's not complicated, doesn't have a file six inches thick and the emotional landscape of a minefield.

Darcy reminds him of the women he saw around town before his parents died, the ones his father called too smart for their own good, the ones that pressed business cards into his mother's hand. They looked just as hard and worn as every other woman he saw out on the outskirts of town, but there was something to them that hadn't been ground down. She's the same as the young waitresses in the countless diners he'd taken refuge in, after Barney had left him alone in the circus, who would sit down and talk to a young kid about how they were going to go to college and get out of this town for good.

Clint's wondered how often that happened, and how often they returned back to the dust of where they came from, unhappy but bound to the grit, wiping spills off of diner chairs and pie crumbs off the counter.

He wonders if how much he likes Darcy is tied up with that little bit of glamour, a pretty girl who takes the time to talk to him, and that hope that someday he'd make his own way.

Darcy and Jane are missing, and no one seems to care. It doesn’t just tug at him in the wrong way; it might as well be a tugboat pulling at him. Something’s wrong, and if no one else is going to get their het up about two assets going quiet, he does have vacation time that he’s pretty much never used.

“Clint,” Natasha tries to stop him from filing paperwork for leave — As an Avenger, he now has a lot more latitude in his movement than he did as just a specialist — but the plan is already forming in his head. “Clint, you know the standard procedure for them as well as anybody. Three check-ins before we send out a crew to their last known position. Last time they missed a check in, it was because the power went out and they were out without their generator. They are fine, Clint. Give them the three days.”

He doesn’t give them the three days. Listening to Natasha is a lot like listening to, well, anyone that’s smarter than him; it’s probably a good idea to do. But patience isn’t Clint’s forte, action is and it isn’t until he’s back at his building (his fucking building) in Bed-Stuy, staring down at all five foot five of the other Hawkeye that he realizes what his plan of action actually is, and what he has already put into motion back at headquarters.

“Clint Barton if you actually think you are going to head out to Podunksville, New Mexico just because your girlfriend is a little late answering your text messages you are….” Kate apparently sees something on his face and in the slump of his shoulders. “So okay, I got a phone call saying to talk you out of whatever batshit crazy you’ve got planned but….”

Clint catches a look at himself in the stainless of the toaster. He doesn’t look tired; he’s far too revved for that, but his eyes are not quite right and his worry lines are noticeable. He takes a lot of effort not to wear his face like that, he’s not that guy. He’ll deflect his worries with a joke and a grin, develop laugh lines and crow’s feet, because worry is something private that you keep in your gut. But Kate sees things in Clint that other people don’t and it’s a frightening partnership they have because of it.

“But I think maybe I should hear whatever your stupid plan is.” Kate rests her hand on her hip and sinks her weight onto one side. She never can figure out what to do with that other hand though, and she runs it through her hair while waiting for Clint to explain.

“I have a car?” He says.

“You had a car. Right up until Sandy,” Kate points out. “That car was like the instigation of a whole lot of bad ideas.”

“No, I mean I have another car. She’s in storage, though. Bess ought to be able to get us across country even if she isn’t all that pretty to look at. I replaced the engine not long ago on her.” He looks around at the apartment, the walls mostly bare and Lucky curled up in the corner, leg twitching. Do city dogs dream of rabbits? Or rats? Chasing something that’s for sure. Go get ‘em Lucky.

“What was their last known?” Kate asks, dropping her stance a bit. Kate likes Darcy, in a sisterly sort of way. It makes him nervous, just a little, because Kate’s just Kate. He knows she’s pretty, knows that Kate’s the type of girl that makes other men crazy for being on just the right side of legal, but when he looks at Kate, he just sees Kate. Darcy’s not much older than her, a nearly completed college degree away and yet he can see a hell of a lot of different possibilities with her.

Sometimes he thinks that Kate is the Hawkeye he could have been, if he were different. He’s glad to know that the mantle, whenever he sets it aside again, is in the best hands possible.

“Um, still in New Mexico. They were thinking of heading into Nevada,” his smile is a ghost on him, “Darce wanted a break, said they should hit Vegas, then do readings in the Mojave. But when I last checked the tracker…”

“You bugged your girlfriend?” Kate rolls her eyes. As if he hasn’t done worse. But this one isn’t actually his fault.

“No, Coulson did, back in New Mexico.”  He’d realized that Foster was going to be important and worth keeping an eye on. It had only taken a second for him to get it secured to the Pinz in the aftermath of Thor leaving Earth. Clint had been the distraction, chewing back one liners as Foster unloaded the SHIELD vans bringing her back her things. Because by any god out there she was not going to trust the mouth-breathing government agents with her things.

“Sorry,” Foster’s lab assistant had said, handing over a cup of coffee, “Jane gets a little…Jane-ish at times.”

“You should let her know that we aren’t mouth-breathing government agents, though,” Clint said with a straight face. “We’re mouth-breathing paramilitary agents.” Her grin was slow and toothy, and her head bobbed in appreciation and it sort of felt like Clint had done his good deed for the day to make her smile. It was the first time he had met Darcy, and he’d only found out her name later when skimming the mission reports before taking up Tesserect-watching in New Mexico.

Kate looks at Clint, like actually looks at him, taking two long breaths before saying, “Well, we can’t take Lucky with us. Simone and her kids like him right? I think she feels better when there’s a dog around, we should get her one, instead of just sharing the mutt all the time.” Kate whips out her phone, flipping it around and her fingers fly over the screen. “We can’t go through Colorado. Bad things would happen. We don’t like bad things, Clint.”

Sometimes, Clint really doesn’t know what to make of this girl, not at all, “What are you doing?”

Kate lifts her head up, tilts it with yet another eye roll and Clint can hear the echoes of foster parents and group home administrators tell him that if he keeps doing that, his face will stick that way. “I’m letting Billy know that I’m going to be out of town for a while. It’s this thing we do, we talk to each other. What’s the sound system on your car, and did you really name it Bess?”

“I didn’t ask you to come with me!”

“I know, that’s was pretty short sighted on your part, Hawkeye. Someone’s got to make sure that you don’t get into too much trouble.” Kate grabs a plastic bag from, well Clint’s not sure where, but she begins to pack up Lucky’s things to take downstairs.

 

* * *

Clint never really knows what to do with his hands at these things, and he's had to go to a good half dozen Rebuild New York fundraisers by now, and will probably go to another half dozen before it’s all over. The rich folks really just want to take a look at the people who both saved their city and wrecked a portion of it in the process. He's doing alright with being at them, occasionally being a center of attention even, mostly through years of being a spy. But still, his hands have always been his tell when he's uncomfortable, the years of being patient with them die out, and Clint will stuff them in his pockets, circle the fabric of his pants, rubbing it between his fingers.

He doesn't take a drink, nothing more than a soda, so that it looks like he's drinking. He's learned that to do otherwise is a highway to having to explain himself, and somehow "Yes, I drink, but not tonight." isn't a socially acceptable response.

This fundraiser is somehow a little better than some of the others, probably because it’s one of Pepper's. She has minions that are shaping up to be the next generation of hyper-efficient assistants, like she's creating them in a factory somewhere. And that's probably not out of the range of possibility for Stark. He might need to follow one later and make sure it sleeps in a bed and not a charging station.

Ingrained habits don't ever stop, so he's scanning the room when he sees it, a stray elbow from an elegantly dressed woman knocks into the glass that Darcy Lewis is holding, spilling all over her dress. The woman takes a moment to look Darcy up and down, raising her eyebrow and turn back to her conversation without a word.

There's a complexity to Darcy's emotions that Clint knows all too well. It starts with anger that burns in her neck, the muscles tightening, her mouth dropping as if to say something. But her jaw closes again with resentment, her lips thinning into a line, and her head tilts and her shoulders fall slightly as she excuses herself from her companions.

Clint can't stop watching her, something so familiar in her reaction, but she doesn't head to the bathroom to clean up. Instead she tracks down a waiter and bums a cigarette off of him and even a lighter, with a wink and a promise and walks out to a balcony that's been blocked off. She slips easily behind the velvet rope.

Clint follows.

Darcy's sitting on the tile of the balcony, her bare legs curled up next to her, taking an early drag off the cigarette, mostly letting it burn as she stares at the skyline. Clint can't figure it out, but there's something off about her dress. Not in the way that Jane's was just a little too old for her, like she's the damn matron of the ball. But while Clint thinks Darcy's dress is great, there's just something off. Too short, the wrong fabric, too tight in the wrong places, just something that the offending woman saw and dismissed Darcy as not even worth an apology.

"That's a disgusting habit," he says from behind her.

"Yeah, well, it's my one." She doesn’t look at him, just keeps staring out into the sky, but she offers out her cigarette to Clint.

Clint sits down beside her, crossing his legs and getting dust on his suit pants, “A day?" He takes the cigarette from her, the welcoming gesture it is, and takes a quick drag, more than enough for him, and hands it back.

"A year. More and everything starts smelling like home too much." Darcy holds the cigarette more than she smokes it, a gentle weight between her fingers and tightly wound security.

It doesn’t have pleasant memories for him either. The house wasn’t always full of smoke, but there’s a part of him that always sees a cigarette hanging out of his father’s mouth or banged into an ashtray. Before the group homes, the world was ash and whiskey, and in the group homes, it was little more than stolen moment versions of the same. But he gets how it can be comfortable, though, that little reminder of the way things were in a much larger world.

“I thought I had figured it out this time,” She says, “I took notes at the last party on what the real fine ladies wore, how they wore their hair, made themselves up. I thought I could finally get it right.” She looks down at her dress, tugs at it. “Half an inch too short, I think. Colors right, maybe a bit too tight.”

“You look great. I like it.” He says honestly, “Not that it matters. I’m pretty sure there’s a person in SHIELD whose sole job is to make sure I wear appropriate clothes on my undercover missions.”

Clothing is one of those things that marks people, and it’s harder than you suspect to get right. Even in mens clothes it’s all about the details. The collar, the cuffs, the length of the pant legs, straight down to color and cut and material, it will all betray you just as easily as a panicky informant. Who makes it, where you bought it, how much you paid for it, these things somehow matter here. And in the space of a glance, some rich asshole of a woman has made every decision she was going to make about Darcy. The same way he’s been judged at these functions despite the full knowledge of what he does, what he has done and sacrificed for people like her.

And it burns at him; it always has. Let them consider him trash, he knows where he’s come from, that at the end of the day, he’s just small folk with a bit of talent. But Darcy, Darcy doesn’t deserve that one bit.

Darcy doesn’t answer him, just lets the cigarette burn down without taking any more of it. “You think you’ve actually left the trailer park, but somehow, it always finds its way back to you. You know, when Jane offered me the internship, she warned me that there wasn’t much of a place to sleep... but I’ve been on the couch since I was thirteen, when my second sister was born. My dorm room was more privacy than I’d had in years, so a portioned off slice of the car dealership or the back of the van? Heaven.” She picks up speed as she speaks, running her fingers together and tracing the fingernails. “I don’t know why I just told you that, Barton, I just….”

“It’s sometimes good to share with someone who gets it,” he says, watching as Darcy quickly field strips the butt, and when she tilts her head, her hair comes loose over her shoulder. She’s prettier than sin itself and not twice as lovely. This is a bad idea. “Why don’t you come out on my arm? They think I’m one of them, after all, and I think a little trailer trash around here could liven the place up.” He grins at her, all flash.

Darcy is slower to return his smile but man, she lights up, “You are the best!” and she must mean to kiss his cheek, but something turns his head and their lips touch and graze. There’s sweetness underneath the tobacco, and it’s all too brief. So’s the second kiss, neither of them wanting to stop, but not really wanting to commit with this sort of vulnerability between them. Instead, he helps her up and they dust themselves off and straighten themselves out before heading back to the ballroom to cause a little noise.

 

* * *

“This is your car?” Kate looks sidelong up at Clint after he opens up the storage unit, the door clacking upwards, and raises her eyebrow.

“Yes, Kate,” he sighs, because of course it’s his car. Would he really bring her out to someone else’s car when time is on the line? “It’s my car.”

“Clint, I say this as a fellow enthusiast, but have you ever found a shade of purple that you didn’t like?”

Okay, believe it or not, finding the 71 Dodge Challenger in Plum Crazy was an accident. Getting a steady paycheck for once and not a whole lot of expenses meant his bank account (an actual bank account, which was also a novelty. His parents hadn’t had one, nor most of the circus and certainly not anyone one the street) was building up at a very strange rate. He’d seen the listing for it in a left behind newspaper while waiting for a meeting to start, hadn’t even mentioned a color.

Back in Waverly, there’d been a ’70 Challenger down the street in a bright red metallic, and through the windows he’d seen Charlie Baker washing it once a week. Baker was the son of the locksmith and just seemed happy and willing to keep his life homebound and learning from his father. But he’d tear down the streets in the car, hollering in joy in the middle of the night, while Clint stared and built up his own childish courage.

He bought the car on the spot, even though he’d had to rent a storage unit and get it towed and had never worked on cars in his life beyond basic maintenance.

“Although, I think it’s more rust than paint at this point. She actually runs?”

“Yes, princess, she runs. I told you that I put in a new engine not terribly long ago.” While Coulson was recouping, before he transferred to the New York daily operations, there was bonding. Coulson had brought in his car one day and Clint had mentioned his own and that he always seemed to have the money to fix her up, but never the time.

Coulson had made time, and in-between visits from Darcy that seemed to make his head spin and his feet light, they’d found the parts and learned from manuals and made that engine run perfect. Clint always has been pretty good with his hands. Bess wasn’t pretty, but she ran like a dream and since he wasn’t a restorer, he’d put a fantastic sound system in. He’d taken her out and about a few times. Bess needed work, and the ride wasn’t exactly smooth, but she’d get cross country.

Kate looks at Clint dubiously, before closing her eyes and shaking her head, “I hope you got an adaptor in there, because my phones already half-dead.”

“Get in the car, Katie-bug.”

Kate opens the door and looks down at it, “Does this thing even have locks? Seriously, Barton, is Bess,” and she says the Challenger’s name like it was going to bite up at her, but with sincere humor, “as old and beat up as you?”

“In the car Kate!” He yells and points as he gets into the driver’s seat.

 

* * *

”Oh man, Clint, she’s a mess!” Darcy had said with a happy sigh, “But I can see why you love her. She’ll make quite a racket.” Clint runs a hand across the side panels, then up Darcy’s arm and back before settling on her shoulder.

Clint’s really not sure what he’s done to deserve this. He’s just started the repairs with Coulson, half the engine in piece on a table in a garage, and somehow Darcy let herself get dragged out here with him. Even though she’s only in town for three days, and two of those are for meetings; but since that party, they’ve kept up and it’s been terrifyingly easy to actually keep talking to each other after falling into bed that night, half-drunk and laughing.

“I think I might know a place that has the carpet you’d need for her,” Darcy says, relaxing into his arm, and yeah, this is okay. This might be something he can make work. “I’ll call home and see if Markie is still restoring cars. He was working on his dad’s when I visited last, and it was a similar model year. He can’t calculate shit, so he ended up with like, five cars worth. Man, she’s just great.”

“She’s a long way from being able to take you for a ride.” Clint mutters, and he doesn’t even know why he’s said that. It’s presumptive. Despite a few weeks of talking before she got back to New York, he’s still not sure what she’s getting out of this at all. But Clint’s never been all that great at women. Okay, he’s great at like the first month of women. Then things always get sort of weird and he either ends up in some sort of limbo or fucking married.

“Well, then…maybe I’ll just have to stick around with you.” Darcy turns her head to look at him, with her big blue eyes and her eyebrows challenging him to say the next thing.

He’s not sure what the next thing is supposed to be. Is this the relationship talk? That’s not a good talk for him usually. “I’d like that.” He blurts out and isn’t shocked when he realizes that it’s the truth. He’d like for Darcy to be around when Bess is finished and able to be driven. And when he’s repainted Bess, replaced the fabric on the seats, he wants to lean over at a red light and kiss Darcy until it turns green.

“I wish I could stay and help.” Darcy shrugs, almost as if that conversation hadn’t happened. She licks her lip with the tip of her tongue, bites and pulls the lower lip with just a slight drag, “I’ve got to get back to Jane tomorrow. Science waits for no one. We’re meeting up with someone that she’s called a moron under her breath five times in the last two weeks though, so it should at least be entertaining.”

“When will you be back next?” Clint asks, turning them so that he can really look at her, rest their foreheads together. It’s so quiet in the storage garage, that mostly he hears their breathing slowly come into synch with each other.

“I can swing back in after that to go on a date or two with you,” Darcy smiles, almost just a private one for herself, so different from her big and brash face she presents to the rest of the world. Clint doesn’t even think it’s meant for him at all, “The next leg is just down to Culver. She’s got presentations; I’ve got some classwork to turn in. I think I turned the five-year plan into a six-year one.”

So he kisses her, and it’s really just great. He’s got plans. He’s got dates. Clint might just make this work out after all, even if the back of his mind shakes in fear whenever he thinks about what making it work actually means and if he can live up to it.

 

* * *

Kate’s phone is better than his, mostly because Clint keeps forgetting to harass Stark about a new one. The phone honestly isn’t that big of a deal for him, but his just will not pick up GPS satellites unless the sky is sheer blue and the stars are aligned or something. Kate’s, once it’s charged and not leaking more battery than it can charge, picks them up when it’s overcast in Pennsylvania.

“Okay, finally….” Kate says, placing her phone on the console between them and pokes at a hole in the seat covers, “According to this it’s like, thirty hours to her last known location. From the tracker. That you never told her about. Some boyfriend you are.”

“Kate,” Clint’s a good driver with lots of experience, but still, needling during an inexplicable traffic jam is really not needed. “Can we talk about something other than what kind of boyfriend I am?” It’s not a sudden feeling, the dread in the bottom of his stomach and his heart, but more of a realization in fast forward, which screeches by until someone hits play.

Kate looks thoughtful and picks back up her phone, “We’re avoiding Colorado, that’s good. No dead mother coming back. No really, don’t ask. Billy…”

“Say no more. Fucking magic?”

“Fucking magic.” Kate repeats seriously, “Met someone though. Well, again-ish. Did you know Noh-Varr is triple-jointed?”

“Aw, Kate. You’re like ten years old, you can’t tell me these things.” Clint objects, but takes it for the levity she means it to be. Sometimes things get heavy between them, and it’s just weird, because he always feels like he’s the one being taken to school. Still, Kate and, nope. That’s a mental image that comes complete with censor bar.

“Well, it’s my love life, yours, or I can provide for you the story of the totally disgustingly supportive relationship that Billy and Teddy have and sometimes they make me want to dig my eyes out with a spoon.” Kate looks down at her hands.

“We could talk about something other than anyone’s love life.” He stops short. Fucking car in front of him. Clint’s about ready to invoke the wrath of the crabby GPS voice and just drive off of I-81, but that probably won’t help and he doesn’t want to test Bess’s engine and shocks quite so hard yet. Kate’s hands reach up to the dashboard, bracing herself. “Look, we’ve got over a day to kill in the car, let’s just make the whole relationship conversation a topic for later. Much later.”

Kate rolls her eyes but nods, “I’ll take over driving in Indiana for a bit.”

“What, you think I’m letting you drive Bess?” Clint laughs, and finally, finally, he passes the accident that’s caused the backup. A white van is toppled over in the ditch, and there’s three men just watching it and the police car that’s come to help them out. Kate presses her forehead to the window, and in the reflection, her eyes are narrowed.

 

“Of course you are letting me drive.” She says, her eyes still tracking the accident. “It’s a thirty hour drive. It would be stupid not to at least split it up a bit. We should stop for a mutual nap at some point though. Rest stop or something.”

“Katie-girl, I’ve driven for longer than this before. I’ve sat in position for forty-eight before. I can do the drive.” The traffics cleared up and they zooming along, the road a pleasant rumble under him.

“Yeah, but you don’t have too.” And that’s God’s own truth. True enough that if there is something they need to take up and Hawkeye their way through at the end of the road, he might want to have a few hours of sleep under his eyes. “Or, I could help you stay awake by detailing exactly what triple-jointed means.” She flashes him a cheesy, devious grin, louder than any words.

And he can’t help it, he laughs along with her. It’s just Kate being Kate, and he lets her chatter wash over him as he drives.

 

* * *

It wouldn't be fair to call Clint unconscious. Because despite his eyes being closed and feeling so glazed over that he could properly be called a donut, he’s awake. The couch is comfortable and he doesn't have to attempt to make it up the stairs to the bedroom. Assuming he could even lift his legs. They weren't doing a very good job of that. Someday, he's going to take everyone's advice and stop jumping off of buildings, but today was not that day. He'd made it home only to stumble face first over the arm of his couch, and there he's stayed, legs still sticking out over the side.

He's not sure if he called Kate or if Natasha did, or hell, if Steve did. Or if he did and he just can't remember making that call. But she'd come over and taken a look at him and just moved his head so he was no longer sticking his nose between the seat cushions.

“If you weren’t laid out like this because you were saving the city from animatronic robots that came to life, I’d call you pathetic. If you are still like this in the morning, you should actually check in with a doctor. A real one, not just someone that calls himself a doctor.” Kate had said a few hours ago. It’s a possibility that he may have to consider.

The door opens. Kate is dozing on a chair that Clint doesn’t remember buying, but she sits straight up, and he can almost hear her eyes open.

“Clint, I swear to god if you are like dead somewhere, I am going to kill you again! Oh —!” Darcy stops short as she walks through the doors, and Clint does vaguely remember that she was coming into town and that he’d left her a key to get in if he wasn’t there and, okay, this looks a little bad because… “Hello, young woman in Clint’s apartment.” Darcy’s voice sounds terrible and tentative, and Clint wants to call out and say that this isn’t what it looks like. He’s talked about Kate. Maybe there should have been pictures.

Kate, for her trouble, is already out of the seat and judging by her legs, which is the only thing he can see, she’s prepped for quick action.

“Wait, are you Kate?” Darcy clears her throat and asks. And that’s the clever girl he knows she is, not jumping permanently to the wrong conclusion. “You’ve got to be. So, do I need to go kill my boyfriend or is he….”

“Couch.” Kate says warily, her weight shifting towards Clint.

And he’s about to pass out again, but he swears he hears Darcy softly say, “My big idiot….

When he wakes back up, he’s no longer breathing in stuffing from the couch, and he’s settled much more comfortably, the back of his head cradled against a soft and warm thigh. Darcy’s fingers, and he knows that touch anywhere, comb through his hair and sweep down against his neck.

“I’m not really sure what I’m doing,” Kate says, her voice low in her throat. “We said we would stop, but I can’t seem to. I don’t think I want to.”

“Do they know how much time you spend here?” Darcy asks, “I mean, hanging out with one Hawkeye is a pretty good sign that you aren’t ready to give it up.”

“They think I’m keeping in practice.” Through a barely opened eye, Clint can see that Kate’s drawn in on herself, her legs tucked underneath her. “But they don’t know the extent of what that practice is. Or that it’s not really practice at all. I just —” Kate stops for a moment, and there’s some vulnerable about how her mouth hangs open without a hint of her bravado, like all the self-assured adult of her has faded away and she’s just another kid. “It feels wrong not to do this, when the people I’ve lost because of it loved it so much.”  Another pause and she admits heavily, “I miss Cassie. More than I thought I would. Different than I thought I would”

“Things like this, I think they get into your blood,” Darcy replies. “Few years ago, you ask me if I’d be traveling around the planet chasing cosmic rainbows and I would have asked you where you got your shit from, and not have accepted it as normal. It’s in the blood. Runs right alongside the sugar and caffeine and, I don’t know, the white blood cells. Not doing it is wrong, Kate.”

Clint stays quiet, because this is the shit he isn’t good with; the emotions behind what they do. Everyone’s drive is different. Clint can’t stay still at the sight of someone doing another person wrong and wants to, will even, take the hit that wasn’t meant for him. Because it’s better when it’s him that’s hurt.

“What are you going to do when you graduate, Darcy?” The true Hawkeye superpower is evading the deeper questions when they get too tough.

Her fingers stop on Clint’s hair, and she traces an earlobe instead, “I don’t know. I’ve never thought that far ahead. Getting here was always more than I thought possible.”

Kate’s a good kid, but terribly spoiled. She mostly makes up for it, but he can read her face. She doesn’t get it. She can slum it when she needs to, even wants to, but you can never completely erase the privilege of not being able to see how much impossible there is in the world.

There’s so much impossible in the world, he thinks. Darcy traces his earlobe and he’s asleep again, nice and easy.

 

* * *

Kate doesn’t believe in awkward silence. Probably because given free license she can talk for hours, non-stop, about everything and absolutely nothing at all.

“…But what I’m saying is, for a guy that can literally bend reality to his will, we spend an awful lot of time going out to eat instead of just saying iwishihadapizzaiwishihadapizzaiwishihadapizza a few dozen times until one appears.”

“It’s not like you're hurting for the cash, Kate-kabob.” Clint replies back with a smile. Things seem almost easy in the car, watching the road go by as Kate drives. It’s all roads and power lines, monotony, predictable, everything that the past few weeks haven’t been.

“Oh god, that one is the worst, don’t ever call me that.” Kate snorts with indignation.

Missouri rolls out before them. Darcy’s from around here, somewhere, he thinks. One of the smattering of little towns, tucked into hills. She doesn’t like to talk much about it, like he doesn’t talk about Waverly, back before it grew. But somewhere around here is a lot of history to her, the ropes that have tied knots around her ankles and tried to drag her down.

“Kate-and-Caboodle? Katie-Did? If there were two of you, would you be dupli-Kates?”

“I think if you keep going down this line of discussion, I will throw you out of a moving car, keep her for myself, and rename her Genevieve,” Kate responds evenly, but with some lightness. “She handles more like a Jenny anyways.”

The quiet isn’t awkward. It’s just quiet, the hum of the engine and tires on not so fantastic roads. It’s a highway, it could use some work, could be smoother.

“New chick showed up.” Kate breaks the silence, gearing up for another long discussion, “We’ve kinda adopted her, I think. Well, either that or she’s just hanging with us to figure out where all of our weak spots are. Good thing I covered up my abs. I didn’t know that this country could stand another America though. Isn’t a Captain enough? She could win a beauty pageant though. Gold star.” Kate doesn’t really stop talking, and he’s glad for it. It’s soothing, listening to teenage superhero bullshit and someone else’s daddy issues for a while.

“You think she’s okay?” Kate asks later, much later, Oklahoma’s on the horizon and he’s waking up from a last nap before he takes over the drive.

Clint presses his nose and forehead to the window, leaving a smudge of oil, “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “It’s been awhile since we talked.”

Kate takes her eyes off the road for a moment, giving Clint a hard look, “You did tell her, right?”

“Yeah,” he feels raw in his throat and lungs, “I told her.”

 

* * *

Four more hours, Clint thinks, four hours before he's off on a SHIELD mission or something and Darcy's off to New Mexico for an undetermined amount of time. She's not even supposed to be here, but she convinced Jane that stopping by to sleep before continuing on would be a good idea for her own sanity.

"I love Jane, but if I can't get a nap away from her every now and then, I will flip out." Darcy throws her language around like violence, razor-edged with affection. There's no pretense, just the straight and narrow, he doesn't always have to look for second meanings or puzzle out what truth he's expected to find.

Tony tells him he's robbing the cradle. Natasha tells him not to screw this up. Shit, even Coulson has given him a hard look from time to time, all over Darcy. She’s worth it though. Darce gives him shit, doesn’t take his and honestly, legitimately gets that his life isn’t all New York and bows, that he’s never really left the floor above the butcher’s shop.

Clint rolls her over, pinning her shoulders to the bed, “I thought you two had sorted the sleeping situation out in the van when you travelled.”

“We have, but that assumes she lets me sleep. She tries to work while she drives, and she keeps me up so I can type. She’d try to do both at once and I am not dying for her.” Her hands creep up his arms, over the top of his shoulders with steady fingers. It’s casual, just like a thing they do, and she ends up cupping his face and dragging him down for a kiss. She’s still sleep-cold, but warms under his touch. “You make it very hard to go change the world via astrophysics and coffee.”

Clint settles his weight, so that he doesn’t crush Darcy, but lays his naked body down on hers, skin against skin against fabric, the weight of the blanket. What he wants is to take in every moment he can of the next four hours, bottle them up like lightning bugs in the heat of summer. He takes the kiss she offers and makes it lush and deep, and a sovereign remembrance of every other kiss and caress they’ve shared.

Darcy doesn’t have the tight rip cord strength that Natasha has, nor the carefully concealed muscles that Bobbi cultivated as she made her leap from the sciences division to field agent. What Darcy has is strength enough to hold him and never let go of herself. But her muscles tense and move under him, and when he pulls back, when her hands move into his hair she says, “I think I love you.” And her eyes are wide and awake.

It’s only years of training that keeps him from getting sick right there, while his stomach reels. He wraps his foot around hers to keep him there and grounded, and not running away. “Yeah?” he breathes out, and wonders what he has to look like for Darcy’s smile to fade a bit. He rubs at her ankle.

Even though he’s pushing down bile, and everything is telling him, reminding him that what he loves always goes away, always will hurt him when they do leave and he needs to, he needs to, he needs to.

“I think I do too,” he blurts out, because if he doesn’t say it, he never will, “Love you. Darce…” he pushes all that worry down until it’s just filling out the bottom of his legs. Darcy can support the weight, she’s better than anyone, and his face erupts in the epiphany of it all. “I love you.”

He’s got four more hours and he’s not going to waste them on the gnawing pit trying to break loose in him, he’s going to focus on Darcy’s steadily warming and responsive body, her voice in his ears and drink her in to keep until they see each other again.

 

* * *

“Well damn, New Mexico actually is pretty.” Kate says from the passenger seat, in between bites of the hamburger that she insisted they stop and grab. Clint’s tongue has grown three sizes, his vocal cords thinned and withered, that’s what he feels in his body at least whenever he tries to talk or do anything other than breath and drive. He’s being too quiet and it worries Kate so she talks more.

Clint clears his throat and nothing still comes out, but he’s interrupted by an alarm on his cell phone. His may have the worse GPS but his is the one that has the program for the tracker that Coulson placed with Foster’s vehicles. Kate picks it up, says that he shouldn’t fiddle with his phone while he drives. Her fingers fly over both of their phones as she programs in the coordinates for the GPS.

“God, they are in the area of butt-fuck nowhere,” she says, her lip curling in disgust, “signal is erratic, but it’s there and steady.”

“Good—” Clint starts before he has to jerk the wheel and drive into the shoulder as a van screams past them, seemingly from nowhere. His arm pulls Kate’s shirt and keeps her from hitting anything solid entirely out of instinct.  He’s gotten creative with the swearing and Kate just starts laughing. He’s fine, she’s fine, car is still a bit of junk but fine, everything’s fine, and he can get back on the road with a little more ease than he got off of it.

“Little warning next time…” Kate grumbles.

“I wonder where they are going in such a hurry.” Talking about something else is a lot easier and it loosens him up, “How long?” he asks, pointing with one hand to the phone as he gets up to speed on the mostly empty highway.

“Not long, hour or two, maybe. If they are where their van is.” Clint doesn’t want to think about if they aren’t where their van is, except that he has to. He has to start thinking about that. As they’ve gotten on this road, he’s started to believe it himself, that this is a fool’s errand and he’s very good at playing the fool.

He follows the GPS as it takes him from highway to back roads, fills up on gas and water at an outrageously overpriced gas station, even by New York City standards. New Mexico, land of enchantment, and where gods have walked the dirt, is beautiful.

He comes back to the car and Kate is there running her hands over Bess with a curious expression. “Hey, Clint,” she says when they are both back in the car, “Don’t take this to mean much more, but I think I like Bess a hell of a lot more than that other Challenger. Why did you buy that one when you had this?”

Clint stops and looks down at the car, the recently replaced carpets, the glint of old paint from the hood, how it was so much the same and how much of difference a single year makes and sighs, “Hell of a thing, I have no idea.”

They both leave it there, and it’s not much longer until they come close to where the Pinz is parked, and Kate hands up quivers and bows when they come near and decide to make the last half mile or so on foot. They both can run that far easily and Bess just isn’t made for this much off-roading.

The Pinz comes into view first, dark against the heat. A GP medium is set up beside it, which Darcy has said they use for most of their actual fieldwork, a portable shower nearby. The water tank is mostly full and soaking in the sun to warm it. It all looks well, recently used and like a little oasis.

“Ugh, this place is a dead zone. No signal.” Kate looks down at her phone. There’s movement in the tent, a quick yell and yelp, higher pitched.

The door flap opens, and Kate grips her bow at the ready, but not Clint, because he knows as sure as day that the first person out is Darcy, taser charged and holding back Jane as she looks around.

“Well, something tripped the alarm again.” Darcy says and her voice, her voice, he’s missed that, “Twice today.”

“Um, yeah, that was us. Hi?” Clint calls out warily, and walks forward, Kate a few steps behind him. Darcy just stands in the tent’s doorway and Jane dips under her arm to stride out to meet him.

Her hand reaches his face first, and the slap pulses through his face. Jane’s got an arm on her, “What the fuck did you do to Darcy!” she fumes through her tightly held body, every inch of her seething. Clint looks out over her shoulder, looks to Darcy in defeat as she shakes her head and slips back inside the tent.

 

* * *

“1970 Dodge Challenger. Man, I’ve always wanted one of these.” The car looks exactly like Baker’s, and he can see the kid, joy riding in the dark down Waverly’s streets like he had nothing else he needed to worry about than that moment.

“Well, if you ever get the chance, you should buy one.” The woman says, her head down as she loads up the trunk for a long haul, “I completely recommend it.”

He means to say that he has a 71 that he’s slowly fixing up, that she’s the best car he’s had, but what comes out of his mouth is “This one for sale?” and it turns out, it could be, and he certainly does have cash enough, and what's another car?

The woman, Cherry, she says, with hair to match and an assessing smile and, and well, Bess could use the company.

Clint Barton knows one thing above all others, he’s a shit and he’ll prove it over and over again and never learns. He finds out again and again that he’s exactly the type of person he thinks he is no matter how much he wants to change.

When Cherry offers, he takes, and he fucks her in her crappy apartment, and can’t even articulate why. And that’s probably the worst thing about it. It’s just opportunity, flashy car and flashy woman who immediately brings trouble to him. It is exactly what he deserves.

“Ask me no questions; I’ll tell you no lies.” Cherry says, hiding her face behind the bank envelope. He shouldn’t do this, he should run out the door right now and…and something, he can figure out a way to fix this later.

Instead, “What kind of trouble?” because he’s a sap that can’t leave a woman in trouble behind. And then there’s the fighting naked, and blacking out, the woman and car gone and taken by the tracksuits, and everything sucks.

Clint Barton is a shit, he’s an idiot, he’s…exactly the type of man he never wanted to be. He tugs his clothes back on and meets up with Kate.

“Really,” she deadpans, “with the abs and the—” he doesn’t want to hear it. Doesn’t want to think about it quite yet, just wants to get this over with then he can figure out ….

Kate’s car is adorable, it really is, and makes a delightful noise when it crashes into the Challenger, “Hey, look. It’s a metaphor for your love life.” And Clint can make no response because he’s stuck in flight or fight, breathing heavy and he just can’t leave any of this alone. And Kate, Kate’s still by his side with the biting remark, but still with him. If Kate can look past, maybe, maybe she, maybe she can too.

He dodges Cherry’s kiss when she leaves, doesn’t touch anything other than what she takes from him, and he wants her gone.

It all comes back to him in the end, like the boomerang arrow Kate derided, it all comes back.

He hangs his head down and Kate reaches up to rest her hand on his neck, “You going to tell Darcy?” it’s a simple question, and implicit in it is how many secrets Kate would have to keep.

Charlie Baker, he looked up once long after he’d been out of Waverly, died in a car crash when he was 22. Made a fuck-up going too fast and turned his ’70 Dodge Challenger over and over again in a ditch.

“Yeah,” he tells Kate, because if this is going to fuck up, he wants to fuck it up honestly.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint steps inside the tent, letting Kate and Jane introduce themselves and talk about whatever they want to talk about. Which is, likely him, and not in a happy ego stroking way.

“Jane I really don’t need nor want you to hit Clint again,” Darcy says, not looking up from the laptop at the standing desk, “It’s just not a right thing to do at all.”

“Thank goodness,” Clint deadpans, “Jane’s got a hell of a swing; she should teach classes.”

Darcy turns her head and then her body to face Clint, carefully blank and her shoulders uneven. It’s her biggest tell, her carriage, the angle of her chin and the line of her body. She can smile with teeth and lies with the best of them, but it’s not like she’s trained to hide her emotions, they’ll always play out somewhere on her. There’s a knot of rage in between her shoulder blades and he put it there.

“I’m still figuring out why our check ins didn’t go through. We’ve been doing just digital ones, messages and I have all of the messages listed as going through, with my reports attached. We don’t get replies back so we never noticed.” She turns back to the screen as she trails off. But it’s not entirely dismissive, but she she’s also not inviting him in either. “I’m surprised they sent you to check in on us, and not someone from a more local office.”

“Um,” he starts, “This isn’t exactly sanctioned.”

“Really, SHIELD didn’t send a sniper and his Girl Friday to see if a science team was still kicking around? Color me shocked, Clint, just shocked.” Darcy’s sense of humor has always aligned closely with his own. Why didn’t he appreciate that? Kate’s right, he is a car crash.

“So what are you doing here, Clint, I mean did you just—” She trails off again, her voice clipped and harsh.

“I got worried and I needed—”

“What, needed to see me? Couldn’t wait until I got home? That’s some utter shit,” she turns back to him abruptly, seething at him, every gesture an exaggeration that is still contained to her boundaries and never crossing into his space, “I told you, I told you that I needed to think and wasn’t going to give up right there over the call, you can’t wait?”

“No—Darcy—No!” Clint wants to reach out and touch her, but what right does he have to that now? He doesn’t have any claim to her, not after what he did. “I was worried, I couldn’t get it out of my head, if you were hurt or—” dead is on his lips, but he’s cut off before he can voice it.

“Bullshit,” Darcy spits out each syllable. And it probably is, but Darcy looks at Clint and must see something that triggers whatever affection she has left for him, “How’d you get here anyway? I saw you walk in.”

It is an absolution in the smallest measure of grace she can give him. “Would you believe I drove Bess?”

Darcy’s face just changes in that moment, cycling through astonishment and amusement and still with sadness. “She made it all this way? Where you hiding her?”

“Back a little ways, she’s not all that happy with being off the roads.” Clint draws closer to Darcy, perching himself within arm’s length on a desk. It wobbles a bit but doesn’t collapse under his weight, “I didn’t tell you, I got in the carpets from your friend back home, put them in not long ago.” He sighs. “Got them in the day after we talked last.”

“I told you, Markie’s good people, and he’d do alright by you and a fair price. Bess is a sweet car, I like that you keep working at her. Didn’t you get another one, um, with…yeah?” Darcy dances around the words, doesn’t want to say them.

“Good car, keeps getting beat up. She got washed away during Sandy. Found her, but I’m not sure if she’s worth the restore.” He rubs his neck with his hand, his head down, and lifts his eyes to her and really just sees her. She’s a little crumpled, the circles under her eyes that she’s always complaining about, genetics she says, are more pronounced, and stands looking at him closed over herself. “I’ve got Bess, and she should have been all I needed. The 70 was just a bad idea all around and I think the universe wants to punish the car for it.”

Darcy shrugs and finds a seat near him, but still outside the weird radius they are keeping, close but not near each other at all, and he really just wants this to stop. He knows why he’s here, he knows, and every time Darcy opens her mouth he’s waiting for those words, the words that mean he can walk away with his head low and the consequences of his impulses certain.

He’s tired of the hope and heartache when the words she says aren’t telling him that it’s over.

Darcy shrugs in the seat with a small smile, “The universe is tricky like that. Punishes those that don’t deserve it. The car did nothing wrong after all, just got mixed up with Clint Barton,” her voice turns sly and low, like it does when they are alone in small moments. “Are you sure your middle name isn’t Fucking?”

“Still pretty sure it’s Francis.” He says automatically, coming easily to his tongue like nothing’s wrong and nothing hurts between them, and he leans in, “Look, if you want me to go, I can just go. You’re okay, that’s really….”

“Clint Fucking Barton, I told you, I wasn’t done thinking yet. But you’re here, so I might as well think a little faster.” She runs her hand through her hair. “So go put your call in so they know that we’re all okay.”

“So what did he do anyways,” Jane says from the entrance of the tent, Kate at her heels telling her to just let them talk, let them be. “You have been moping around since the last time we had signal, and you won’t tell me anything, Darcy. Now he’s here on this flimsy fuck of an excuse and…”

“It’s still not your problem, Jane,” Darcy says, everything going sturdy in her, steel to her backbone. “What’s going on between Clint and I—”

“You are my friend, Darcy, and I’m worried about you!” Jane yells.

“Wait, you didn’t tell your best friend?” Kate says in exasperation “Have you been trying to deal all on your own, Darce?” Darcy pulls herself in even smaller and Clint is filled with this burning need to pull her close and yell at the women until they leave Darcy alone. Kate snorts, and she is just as much of an idiot as he is sometimes and says, “He cheated on her, Jane. A one afternoon fuck and a car chase, but he doesn’t even have adrenaline to blame it on.”

Before Jane can respond there’s the squeal of screeching tires and Jane and Kate both react by twisting their bodies to see what’s going on outside. Clint is up and crossing the room just in time to see a familiar vehicle speed its way towards the horizon.

“Hey,” Clint says, narrowing his voice, his eyes, and everything else he can think of, every hackle raised sharp on his skin, “did that look like a van to you?”

“Yeah, that totally looked like a van.” Kate confirms.

The absolute murderous look that Jane is boring into his skull convinces Clint that he should be the one to head back to Bess for the remainder of their gear while the women pack up the portable lab. He trusts Kate to protect them if the van-full of mafia goons get back before he does, before they can get the shit out of there. Foster is more stubborn than fuck and refuses to leave her data for anyone else to find.

When he gets back, carrying both their quivers and extra arrows, and probably even a gun or two (Kate won’t touch them, but Clint can’t deny that sometimes bringing a bow to a gunfight isn’t always the best of ideas) and it’s not a long walk, not at all, but it’s a lonelier walk than he expected it to be, and paranoid as well, every movement setting off his situational awareness. There’s a lot that pings against his thoughts right now.

Most of the outside equipment is packed up, cases open and ready for the remainder of the pieces, a few cords and foam pieces sitting out, stacked neatly (and not entirely neatly) beside them. He’s about to enter the tent to hand off Kate’s gear when he hears Darcy say his name.

“Clint,” she says, her voice stiff and hollow, answering a question he didn’t hear, “and what he did is not any of your concern, Jane.”

“You can’t just bottle it all up though. Darcy, you could have told me, gone in to town for ice cream to commiserate your break up or something.” Jane rushes through her words, and sounds a little farther away. Knowing her, she’s underneath some tech, getting it ready for removal. The faster she talks, the faster she works and thinks.

Clint braces himself and rubs a finger over the fletching of an arrow. “I haven’t…I haven’t broken up with him, Jane,” Darcy says slowly, like you’d speak to an infant.

“Well what are you waiting for?” Jane scoffs, and there’s a clatter of metal against metal and a few grunts. “I mean, I guess it’s more polite to do it in person, but I think yours qualifies as a long distance relationship and it’s really better to not draw it out.”

“Because I’m not sure I want to break it off.” Darcy digs in. “Hand me that, I’ll pack it up.”

“I don’t understand.” Clint doesn’t understand either, so that probably makes at least two of them. “He cheated on you. Do you need some other sort of sign to know what he thinks of you and your relationship? Kate, come on, you probably know Clint the best—”

“You didn’t see his face when he realized what he had done, Doc.” Kate counters fiercely, “Clint’s an idiot, but he’s not a bad person. I don’t know why he did it. I don’t know if he knows why he did it. But it’s also Darcy’s decision and not yours.”

“A person that cheats on you can’t be trusted.” Jane must have gotten out from the mechanicals, voice clear but it still echoes. It’s his own thoughts in someone else’s mouth. “How can you keep going on through a relationship like that?”

Darcy breaths in audibly. “Jane, I just— I love him, okay? And I wanted to talk to him before I made any sort of rash decision about things. Men cheat, you know? Women do too. Saw it all the time when I was growing up. Doesn’t always spell out the end of the relationship, and I’ve got to separate a few things out.”

In some ways, Darcy’s never really left her small town. She’s never really left the sort of environment that means that entertainment is often the things you wouldn’t ever do except out of desperation for some sort of contact and some degree of unpredictable. When things don’t change from day to day, when your world numbs down to the same paved roads, the same bills and too many mouths and too little money. She’ll never go back, but it’s never gone from her.

Clint grew up that way too, except without the stability of place. Home is wherever you’ve bunked that night, whoever you found that will. And he has a steady paycheck and skills, but that doesn’t mean he’ll have that tomorrow.

They are all quiet for a moment, and Clint peers in, watches the three of them working to fit a large and delicate something or other into its matching case. All of their muscles strain, not a weak one in the bunch. Women used to pulling their weight and working on their own. He hates that he dragged himself out here, and for what? To pull them out because his problems followed him here.

“That’s way easier to take down than it was to set up.” Darcy mutters, “Jane, can’t you remake that in something lighter? Like maybe dumbbells?” There’s nothing quite like women laughing. And despite the tension between them all and the situation, they laugh easily and freely. “I’m glad you came, Kate,” Darcy says. “Jane’s a lightweight; can’t lift shit.”

Foster balks, but Kate laughs, “Man, I needed to get away from my team and New York for a bit. Nothing like the open road to help you think.” Kate sits down on the crate as Darcy latches it shut. “And the boys are great. All the boys,” Kate straight up leers at Darcy, waggles her eyebrows. “Aliens, Darcy, it’s all about aliens.”

“I could have told you that.” Jane grins and Clint’s not sure when he’s seen that look on her before and oh shit, she’s talking about Thor and there are just some mental images he doesn’t need. Jane is tiny and Thor is Thor and no matter how star-crossed lovers they are, it’s disconcerting.

“But uh,” Kate grabs Darcy by the arm away from Jane, and Darcy’s eyebrows wrinkle and she leans in, “but not to make this all about the Hawkeye Emotional Avoidance Tour, but uh, I had to work something out.”

Darcy immediately steadies, “Kate what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Yes! No! Just, you know, you think you understand what your feelings are, right?” Kate runs her hands through her hair, “And I’m not sure if it’s just a team thing, or if it’s a thing-thing, but I think I liked Cassie. I think that’s why her death is hitting me so hard. And I think I’m more than just…impressed by this new girl on our team. So either I just have a thing for competent teammates or I’m not quite as straight as I thought.”

One thing Darcy does real well is cover her surprise, if she’s even surprised at all.  Clint does not do the covering thing so well and trips over the entrance of the tent, falling on the outside canvas and bringing it crashing down around him.

“He’s such a help isn’t he?” Darcy says with a strained affectionate smile and it feels like a victory.

“Ladies, I present to you the Amazing Hawkeye.” Kate rolls her eyes and goes to help him up deadpanning all the way. “Can you believe the nimbleness of this guy? We should go dancing.”

“If I wanted to be sassed by you, I would have invited you.” He grumbles and reaches down and picks up her fallen gear and hands it to her, “Let’s get a move on, okay?”

“Hey, Clint!” Darcy shouts, “Where’d you stash Bess? We’ve got shit that won’t fit in the van.” She makes a petulant face at Jane, “Because someone decided she needed that,” she waves her hand, “doohicky or something. I don’t know, it’s heavy.”

Clint runs his hands through his hair. “She’s a little ways off. You parked yourself inside some bumpy terrain and if I can save those shocks for a little longer, maybe I can make it home before replacing them.”

“Well excuse me, I was thinking of our safety. I didn’t know that my boyfriend would be bringing trouble alongside him. Guess I should know better.” Darcy sighs, “Let’s go get her, Barton. Unless you don’t want me to walk with you.”

He nods and it’s actually a hardship to not reach out and take her hand, help her with the rough spots. She doesn’t need it. She wears sturdy boots and has excellent balance and always lands on her feet.  They walk together pretty quiet, and he hates this awkward between them. When she touches his arm, pulls him close to her, he knows it’s not for a kiss, not for the closeness that he doesn’t deserve, but she does bring him up short. Even if it’s not close, it still feels intimate, and her fingers linger on his skin.

“I just have one question,” she says, her voice quiet and tired. “Just why? Why her?”

Clint’s reviewed that afternoon a dozen or more times in the past few weeks. He’s always come up short somewhere in the car on the way to the store, with Cherry’s hand finding the inside of his thigh and him not saying a word, like he could have. One word would have stopped it, just take the car and help the lady out, but he didn’t. And he didn’t stop any of the other times, when he met her lips, and groped her through her clothes and was led into her room. It’s not like it was an accident. She didn’t accidentally fall onto his dick.

“I wish I knew, Darcy.” And it’s the most goddamn truthful thing he’s ever said.

He hears them before he sees them, crappy vans coming around the bend and a hill, with mufflers that have seen better days. He hurries Darcy into the driver’s seat and has her call Kate—Jane will never pick up her phone—and while the van doesn’t have a lot of speed, the lead time should be enough while he deals with these two vans.

“Tell her to get to the nearest safehouse. Kate should know—”

“I know where the safehouse is, Barton,” Darcy spits out, starting the car and balancing the phone on her shoulder. “I paid attention during security briefings.” She barely gives him a second glance as he preps his bow and arranges arrows in front of him. She’s quick and efficient over the phone and gets Bess speeding off in seconds.

“Why the hell are they after you anyway?” she yells, dropping the phone off of her shoulder.

“Fuck if I know. Normally the tracksuits keep with Ivan back in Bed-Stuy.” They haven’t followed him anywhere else. Ivan should only be mad at him about the apartment building not anything else. Fuck. No there is something else. Cherry. Did she leave something in the car? Something else hiding in the trunk? Vendetta. Fuck. This woman is never going to stop causing problems. “Um, maybe for the same reason you are so rightly upset with me.”

“Clint Fucking Barton, what have you gotten us into?” Darcy shakes her head and slams on the gas.

Clint’s most of the way out of the window, his foot hooked on some part of the dash and really wishing he’d fixed the shocks and struts before he had to take Bess on her very first high speed car chase. He’s going to hit something and hopefully it won’t be his head. They are nearly at the camp when he has to duck back in to rearrange arrows.

Jane and Kate are barely getting up speed, and Darcy mutters angrily about Jane. About how she never can move fast unless it’s her idea, how she probably need to pack more, about how she can’t drive for shit. Kate emerges from the window too, hanging out the side and aiming at tires. She doesn’t have Clint’s arsenal with her, just straight up arrows. But sharp pointy objects have their place when it comes to causing blowouts, and one of the vans takes a topple, rolling over to rest on the hood. He’s got no sympathy and Kate doesn’t have a clear line of sight on the other bro-rider.

See, he can still make puns and shoot at the same time, “Darce, right, right. Just a little bit.” She can read his fucking mind, because with those simple vague instructions, she moves Bess into just the right position. Once again, Clint leans out the window, the wind pushing him ahead and near deafening against his years and he can see Kate doing the same, keeping the van occupied with close but not quite shots, steady and suppressive. But she can’t do that for long, and he’s going to have to make one arrow count.

Explosive, he thinks, maybe says, because Darcy looks at him strangely, a terrified quick glance as she drives. She’s scared but holding it in beautifully. It’s good to be scared, being scared means it’s worth it. Nocking and drawing and releasing are as fluid as breathing air, doesn’t even need to think about it, and the arrow skims the fuel tank and he presses the button on his bow that controls detonation.

He doesn’t look back. Doesn’t need to and doesn’t want to.

Darcy eventually relaxes, the tense grip on the wheel changing to a bit of delight when they hit road instead of dirt.  “I’d forgotten how much I love this car.” She says, a hint of a deep smile on her face, her eyes soft, “Handles great, even with the abuse we put it through.”

“You might be driving, but I think I put it through the ringer.” Clint replies, knowing that none of this is really about the car.

The sun goes behind cloud cover and the light into the car dulls, shadowing Darcy’s features, “One more question. Would you do it again?”

Honesty is a tricky thing, Clint thinks, because the easy answer is of course, no. It’s even a true answer. But it’s not the right one, because nothing about this is easy. “No,” he answers, “This is one mistake that I can’t ever make again.”

The safehouse is more like a small SHIELD office, staffed and with a call ahead, they know to expect the four of them and set up a perimeter. With any luck, it’ll be the kind that no one notices. The office is mostly analyst types and code breaking, but they do have the standard security personal. They’ve whisked Jane and Darcy away, just before the endorphins run out of their bodies and they stand there shaking.

For all that they’ve seen and done, they still shake coming out of a fight. Clint hasn’t shook like that in a long time. The staff tries to get Kate to come with them too, but she fixes them with a glare that could probably melt icecaps. You wouldn’t think spoiled rich girls could throw that much physicality around with a look, but like a lot of things with Kate, you’d be completely wrong. Kate’s strong, same as he is, but she also still needs like the rest of the world, even if she’d rather you forget that she isn’t used to doing everything for herself.

It’s strange. Kate can fight, can lead, can bargain and plan, but she’s probably never done her own laundry in her life. When the staff stops flitting around them, that’s the Kate he sees, the one that needs other people, working her way up to conversation.

“So, before you fell onto the tent, good job there, by the way, I take it you heard me saying that—” she leads Clint on the rest of the sentence.

“That maybe perhaps, you occasionally want to get up on the gay side of the bed?” Clint smirks.

“That’s one way to put it,” Kate sighs, “I don’t know why I’m talking to you about this, it’s not like you have any place talking about relationships.”

“I’m great at getting in relationships, Kate, and they are great ones, I’m just the screw-up.” Clint replies honestly, and drags up a couple of chairs so that they can sit. Kate swings hers around to straddle it, and Clint keeps his against the wall so that he doesn’t try to tip it over. “So if that’s your worry, I’m your man.”

“Clint, I like my men pretty.” She waves her hand in his face and bats her lashes innocently. “I like my women tough.”

“Aww, together they make a whole you.” Compliments are compliments after all, even when the recipient scowls at them.

“I don’t know what to do about it.”

“What’s there to do about it?” Clint rubs his neck.  Girls are trouble, at least they always have been for him, “You’re with Noah—“

“Noh-Varr.” Kate corrects.

“But you like America, and kid, we’ve got to branch out on who we hang out with, another Hawkeye–America team is only going to end in bloodshed, and that’s fine. But don’t be like me and chase every thought you have. It doesn’t end well.” Clint hangs his head, “You like girls, you have your epiphany. And that’s something good.” It’s always good to figure things out about yourself long before you have to face them at the worst moments. “But don’t waste what you’ve got unless you are sure it’s not what you want.”

Kate blinks, then knits her eyebrows together in confusion, “Wait, Clint, did you just give me good advice? On relationships?” She says it like the world has ended, and it might have somewhere. He hasn’t checked yet.

“Well, if you can’t figure it out there’s always threesomes.”

Kate can’t hold it in, and she’s good with letting things out, and laughs. It’s small at first, like she’s paying attention to where she is, but it grows and he laughs with her. This is how partners are, he thinks, they get each other, even when the going is rough and neither is in their comfort areas.

Darcy’s like that. She’s always gotten him, even with his rough edges, demanding only what he can give at that time. But she’s a miracle worker, and when she’s beside him, he feels honed and not jagged, not snagging on every pulled string. He just hopes he hasn’t ripped the seam.

“Hey, Clint,” Kate says softly, noticing the look in his eyes when he snaps back from that quiet place in his head. “You should talk to her. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think, you know? We come back from all sorts of strange things, after all. She just might be the forgiving type. You might be a bad boyfriend, but you are a good guy.”

There’s no getting outside in the safehouse, but there are some staircases, and Darcy naturally gravitates towards as much privacy and quiet when the rush is gone. Someone’s gone and given her a blanket, and it’s wrapped around her shoulders loosely. She’s sitting entirely on one step, hugging her knees, smoking some other agent’s cigarette. She’s been here for a while, it’s already almost used up.

Clint lets his footsteps be heard, loud and louder ones as he comes to her step. “Hey,” he says, as she swings her knees around, lets him sit beside her.

“Hey, did you know that when random agents think you are traumatized, they just hand you blankets?” Darcy, her lips pressing against each other against the threat of a smile and offers up the last bit of the cigarette.

“They don’t know you at all if they think you are traumatized. You’ve been through worse.” Clint leans back against the higher step, and takes the last long drag before crushing the cigarette out.

“If you meet a god on the road, taze him, bro.” And her grin wins out, “You know, I’ve never considered myself all that adventurous, but I keep seeming to go on adventures.”

“Brave though,” he says fondly, itching to put his arm around her, “I can’t imagine you not being brave.”

She’s quiet for a good long moment, forming thoughts to put to words, moving slowly and tightening the blanket around her, “You know what it’s like, being that brave, but not enough to really get you anywhere? Everyone keeps asking me what I plan to do after I graduate. And I give them bullshit, but really, I don’t know. I don’t have goals or plans, Clint. I met my big brave goal. I got out, and I got out before I could be tied down to that town. Everything else is just icing. I’m brave, but I’m not adventurous. I can’t think of what goes next.” Darcy looks up at the ceiling, “There’s never been a next. And it’s great that everyone thinks of me, but, you are the one person that’s never asked. For a while I wondered if that was because you didn’t care or if you just didn’t want to pressure me into making a decision about us.”

“Darcy…”

“No, I’m not done yet. This? This whole thing makes me realize that for everything you’ve accomplished, you get that feeling more than anything else. Look at Jane. I mean really look at her. She’s a crackpot. Always has been. But her entire life, she’s been supported by her passion. Her father, Selvig, SHIELD, she’s never wanted for someone willing to listen. She’s so driven by her pursuit that she’s brave with it. I still get calls from my mother asking when I am coming home for good, there’s nothing for girls like us out there.” Her breathing comes out in harsh, half swallowed sobs before she goes on. “And you get that. You don’t prod, you are just there and waiting to be supportive of whatever I find next to drive me. I hate that you betrayed that.”

His heart drops to his feet, because this is it, the reason he came all the way out here. Let it be clean, let it fall on him. Clint can take all the blame; it is his actions that brought them to this. The talking here, instead of waiting for the next time their schedules aligned so he could take her out and fall into bed in the middle of the night, teasing the hem of her dress up her thighs. It can be a fond memory, another record of his failures in interpersonal  skills.

“But what I really hate? Is that I don’t know what to do about it. When you told me, I started on that madness that it was somehow my fault. If I wasn’t out here, if I was smarter, more driven, I would have been enough.”

“None of that is true.” Clint balks, needing to get it out, because that’s the last thing he wants Darcy to think.

“Shut up. This is my turn to talk,” Darcy slaps at his knee, “I know none of that is true. But you cheated and I thought there had to be a reason. It’s actually a relief that you have no idea, that it was just something that happened. Because you’ve seen those women that take their men back time after time, and they blame themselves and their boyfriends blame them too. I don’t want to be that woman, Clint.”

This time, when her hand goes to his knee, it stays there, limp and tired, and that’s exactly how Darcy looks. “But I also don’t think you are that guy, either. I don’t want to give up on the one person who knows when not to place demands on me.” She looks sharply at him, “Don’t get me wrong, you screwed up, and this isn’t going to be fun to start from, well not square one, but maybe like square five?”

Clint blinks and meets her eyes, not quite believing what she’s saying, “Wait, you aren’t breaking up with me?” And his heart picks up from his feet and cautiously, carefully, starts to gain altitude.

“For some reason, babe, I don’t want to be rid of you yet.” It’s so clear, so great, just great that he leans over and rests his forehead against hers and moves the hair off her cheek that stuck there on tear tracks. He may have put them there, but he can make it right again, do better. He’s getting his second chance. Clint’s great at second chances.

Now he has permission to touch and comfort again, “I’m so sorry, Darcy. I never want to make you feel less than who you are. I really do love you.” And tilts her chin and means to just graze their lips together. Something to start reconnecting again. The physical is a gateway to the emotional work they’ll need to do, because she’s going to have to trust in him again, and he’s going to have to show that he can be trusted. But there’s something about the way she tastes, all smoke and raw vulnerability that’s everything like and not at all like that first kiss. It’s not even like the second kiss.

It’s a brand new one. Even though they know the way that they’ll each move, the way Darcy likes to tilt her head or the way Clint will rest a hand on her neck, and they know they will fall back into those familiar patterns, it’s still new. “Yeah, me too,” Darcy says, barely lifting herself away, then going back for her second, second kiss. “Don’t be an idiot again.” 

“Oh honey, ship sailed on being an idiot long ago.” Clint smiles and Darcy re-adjusts herself to put her weight against him, his arms wrapping around her shoulders and he has no intention of ever letting this go.


End file.
